The New South Wales Government will invest $1.6 million into Sydney’s CrashLab test facility as part of an upgrade that will allow more effective in-house testing of advance driver assist technologies like lane-keeping assist and autonomous emergency braking (AEB).

As the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) tightens its criteria based on the inclusion of assistance systems and their effectiveness, CrashLab will gain the ability to test those systems and grade their effectiveness.

NSW roads minister Melinda Pavey recently announced that CrashLab will be given a $1.6 million funding injection to allow the testing to take place.

The first safety system tests aren’t expected to begin until 2019, with new equipment required parts of the facility’s surface in need of a rework before full-scale testing can begin.

Until then, testing for the technology will take place in South Australia, starting in the second quarter of 2018.

New ANCAP rules which came into effect from the start of 2018 mean vehicles that fail to include AEB technology will face extreme difficulty scoring high enough under ANCAP’s criteria to score a maximum five-star safety result.

Less than 20 percent of new cars sold in Australia feature AEB as standard, a number ANCAP hopes to drive up via its increasingly stringent tests.